Happy 25th Anniversary to Pulp’s fifth studio album Different Class, originally released October 30, 1995.
As a teenager, I often felt I arrived too late. If only I’d been born 10 or 15 years earlier, I could have started seeing Cure shows from the very beginning. But, such was my plight and every day since I’ve tried to make up for lost time.
While I still fantasize about being of age in the New Wave era, the truth is I had the privilege of experiencing what followed: Giving rise to myriad genres, such as shoegaze, electronica, trip hop, slowcore, indie rock and Britpop, the 1990s were a decidedly grand decade for music—a rich sonic palette to shower my adolescent mind.
I treasure artists from every aforementioned category (and certainly there’s crossover across the lot), but hopeless Anglophile that I am, I must confess Britpop has a special place in my heart. And more than any other genre mentioned, it remains fixated in my youth. That’s not to say I enjoy it any less. Rather, I associate it with a specific period in my life, an experimental time—those bygone days of pure and utter invincibility.
Some of my best college nights were spent with friends at Britpop club Cafe Bleu in West Hollywood. Any Thursday we could, we’d gather for drinks and then too many of us would pile into a taxi sloshing our to-go Solo red cups, ready to wreak our gentle brand of havoc. Dressed to kill and electrified by the music, we shimmied and spun, sometimes right off the stage (something we needn’t rehash here), hazily reveling in new friendships, experiences and substances—the swirl ever brightening. And at the center of our luminous Britpop world was a quirky band from Sheffield called Pulp.
Oh yes, we may have felt invincible in a few tipple-tipped moments, but we were also walking question marks. After all, we were just entering adulthood and had no idea what we were doing (not that getting older has changed things much). And blame it on my introversion or lack of school spirit, though I’d gone from a suburban high school of 1,300 to a major metropolitan university of 40,000, I still wasn’t sure if, or where, I really fit in. It was in music, I felt connected.
Wrapping unglamorous intimate thoughts in glossy drama, Pulp caught my fancy in high school. At that point, the band, led by vocalist/guitarist Jarvis Cocker, had already been at it for 16 years, trying out different names, labels and sounds—not to mention lineups. By the turn of the ‘90s, Pulp had found its footing. With Cocker enlisting the talents of percussionist Nick Banks, keyboardist Candida Doyle, bassist Steve Mackey and guitarist/violinist Russell Senior, the group finally struck commercial success with their fourth studio LP, His ‘n’ Hers (1994). Having pierced the UK Top 40, jaunty single “Do You Remember the First Time?” then hopped the pond, offering my first taste of Pulp.
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I wish I could say it started there, especially since I’d later discover that His ‘n’ Hers marked the beginning of an unstoppable period in Pulp’s artistic career—and was, appropriately, the first of three consecutive albums to be nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. But, as my thinly veiled lyrical nod suggests, it was “Common People”—the rousing salutation from Pulp’s fifth album, Different Class—that hooked me.
Beaming with cunning, camp and cannonball gusto, both the single and the album immediately became quintessential Britpop listening, as we happily tore into the gifts of Cocker’s persistence.
Inspired by a jumbled array of influences—a secondhand keyboard, a student he met at Saint Martin’s School of Art and Electric Light Orchestra’s “Mr. Blue Sky”—“Common People” emerged first, the boppy by-product of Cocker’s London days. After road testing the tune at the 1994 Reading Festival, the band gleaned its galvanizing qualities and rushed to record it (along with B-side and album track, “Underwear”) with the help of storied producer Chris Thomas that very year.
In the spring of 1995, “Common People” made its official debut, delighting the alternative masses with its ever-building tempo and cheeky retelling of misaligned romance (“But she didn’t understand / She just smiled and held my hand”). Even B-side “Underwear,” in all its slinky panic, slid its way into regular rotation across airwaves, as hype around Pulp continued to grow, rivaling Britpop heavyweights Blur, Oasis and Suede.
While momentum mounted, the six-piece Pulp (who’d added touring guitarist Mark Webber in May 1995) were tucked away at Banks’ mother’s pottery warehouse in Catcliffe, on the outskirts of Sheffield, seeing to an urgent challenge—the rest of the album. (No pressure or anything, right?)
In the liner notes of the Different Class reissue (2006), Cocker recalls, “This marked the beginning of a period of extremely frenzied activity (which, after 10 years of moving at a snail’s pace, was quite a shock to our delicate systems, I can tell you)….By June we thought we had enough good material and went back up to Sheffield to ‘demo’ it all….Next problem – I hadn’t written any words for them. The only solution was to sit in my sister’s kitchen one night with a bottle of cheap Spanish brandy and write until I lost consciousness….”
Where Cocker had struggled artistically in the past, the songs of Different Class flowed effortlessly, pouring out as if a lifetime in the making. Perhaps his time away from Sheffield, in London and Paris, afforded new perspective, lending the right creative spark to easily bring forth his vision.
Like the emanations of a hidden—or even forbidden—observer, Cocker’s words tumble out like entwined narratives, coupling his own inner dialogue with snatches of eavesdropped conversations. Enriched with personal detail, they’re direct, expositional and unafraid to confront private, if quotidian, affairs—the bedroom missteps of the common people (“Oh yeah, all the stuff they tell you about in the movies / But this isn't chocolate boxes and roses / It’s dirtier than that / Like some small animal that only comes out at night”).
For as entertaining and enviable as Cocker is, with his sartorial sheen and sexy swagger, he also freely explores life’s awkward moments. As a frontman, Cocker exudes the charisma of a rockstar. But, in Pulp songs, he’s more apt to channel the preoccupied misfit rather than the affable champ (“When I came around to call / You didn’t notice me at all”).
With Different Class, Pulp extended a message of solidarity—an open invitation to wallflowers, weirdos and pretty much anyone who’s ever dwelt in the fringes. Album opener, “Mis-shapes,” wastes no time making the point, immediately waving its rallying cry: “Mis-shapes, mistakes, misfits / Raised on a diet of broken biscuits / Oh, we don't look the same as you / We don’t do the things you do / But we live round here too.”
Even “Common People,” for all its anthemic exuberance, cast the net, drawing strength and community from its own despondent skin: “You will never understand / How it feels to live your life / With no meaning or control / And with nowhere left to go.”
As had always been the goal, Pulp brought a refreshing air of realism to pop. In the BBC documentary, No Sleep Till Sheffield: Pulp Go Public, Cocker remembers, “I always felt a bit let down by the words in pop songs and I suppose it was alright when pop songs first started cos they were new….But now, you know, it’s been around for 40 years. It’s entered middle age, so it may as well start talking about things in an adult way.”
By attaching the sadder sides of existence to catchy chords and lush instrumentation, Pulp managed to reassure us that it’s OK to be whoever you are. And should their compositions fail to relay the sentiment, the liner notes contain the band’s coy, resounding plea: “Please understand. We don’t want no trouble. We just want the right to be different. That’s all.”
My shy 18-year-old self smiled in complete understanding. Confidence, I was discovering, comes from being true to yourself.
Vibrant and vulnerable, Different Class would remain in heavy rotation for years—as much a part of my college experience as the perennial LA sunshine. It escorted me from adolescence to adulthood, doling out doses of distraction and consolation in equal measure. And when I think of all the times I listened with friends—whether at clubs or after class on my balcony—I remember a distinct sense of liberation. We were on the cusp of everything, and exactly where we needed to be.
Fellow fans of Different Class, you’ll catch my drift when I say, it’s that uncontainable feeling conjured by Cocker singing, “Just keep on moving….”
LISTEN: